“Let’s have the views,” he said.
“Just a moment, sir.”
A lot of things could start fires in the woods, but they were all hundred-to-one shots but two: Lightning and carelessness. Carelessness of some human — sapient, he corrected — being. And the commonest sort of carelessness was careless smoking. Little Fuzzy smoked; he’d had his pipe and tobacco and lighter with him in his shoulder bag.
There’d been a lot of trees and stuff uprooted above that had been shoved down into the canyon. Suppose he’d managed to grab hold of something and kept himself afloat; and suppose he’d managed to get out of the river…
He reduced magnification and widened the field. Yes. Suppose he’d been carried down below the mouth of the Lake-Chain River, on the left bank. He’d start back on foot, and when he came to where the Lake-Chain came in from the north to join the Yellowsand curving in from the east, what would he think?
Well, what would anybody who didn’t know the country think? He’d think the Lake-Chain was the Yellowsand, and go on following it. Of course, he had a compass, but he wouldn’t be looking at that, hanging to a log or a tree in the river. A compass would only tell him which way north was; it wouldn’t tell him where he’d been since he last looked at it.
“I have the fire views now, Mr. Holloway.”
“Don’t bother with them. I’ll get them later. You call Gerd van Riebeek and George Lunt; tell them I want them right away. And tell Lunt to put on an emergency alert. And then get me Victor Grego in Mallorysport.”
He reached for his pipe and lighter, wondering where his hangover had gone.
“And when you have time,” he added, “call Sandra Glenn at the Fuzzy Club in Mallorysport and tell her to hold up work on that commemorative plaque. It might just be a little premature.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LITTLE FUZZY’S EYES smarted, his throat was sore and his mouth dry. His fur was singed. There was one place on his back where he had been burned painfully, and would have been burned worse if someone behind had not slapped out the fire. He was filthy, caked with mud and blackened with soot. They all were. They had just gotten out of mud and were standing on the bank of the small stream, looking about them.
There was nothing green anywhere they looked, nothing but black, dusted with gray ash and wreathed in gray smoke that rose from things that still burned. Many trees still stood, but they were all black with smoke and little tongues of flame blowing from them. The sun had come out, but it was hard to see, dim and red, through the smoke that rose everywhere.
They stood in a little clump beside the stream. No one spoke. Lame One was really lame now; he had burned his foot and limped in pain, leaning on a spear. Wise One had been hurt too, by a broken branch that had bounced and hit him when a tree had fallen nearby. There was dried blood in his fur along with the mud and soot. Most of the others had been cut and scratched in the brush or bruised by falls, but not badly. They had lost most of their things.
Little Fuzzy still had his shoulder bag and his knife and trowel and his axe. Wise One had an axe, and he still had the whistle. Big She had an axe, and so did Stonebreaker. Stabber had a spear, as did Lame One and Other She. All the other weapons had been lost swimming the river that flowed into the lake after the wind had turned and brought the fire toward them.
“Now what do?” Stabber was asking. “Not go back, big fire that way. Big fire that way too.” He pointed up the stream. “And not go where fire was, ground hot, all burn feet like Lame One.”
He had always wondered why Big Ones wore the hard, stiff things on their feet. Now he knew; they could walk anywhere with them. A Big One could walk over the ground here that was still smoking. He wished now that they had carried away the skins of the goofers and zarabunnies they had killed; but of course, if they had they would have lost them in the water too.
“Big Ones’ Friend know about fire,” Stonebreaker said. “We not know. Big Ones’ Friend tell us what to do.”
He didn’t know what to do either. He would have to think and remember everything Pappy Jack and Pappy Gerd and Pappy George and the others had told him, and everything he had seen and learned since this fire had begun.
Fire would not live where there was nothing to burn, or in water, or ground. It would not burn wet things, but it would make wet things dry, and then they would burn. That was not the fire itself, but the heat of the fire. He didn’t understand about that, because heat was not a thing but just the way things were. Pappy Jack had told him that. He still didn’t quite understand, but he knew fire made heat.
Fire couldn’t live without air. He wasn’t sure just what air was, but it was everywhere, and when it moved it made wind. Fire burned in the way the wind blew; this was so, but he had seen fire burning, very little and very slow, against the wind. But the big part of the fire went with the wind; that was what had made the bad trouble last night, when the wind had changed.
And fire always burned up; he had seen that happen at the beginning when the little dry things on the ground caught fire and the fire went up into the trees and burned them. He could still see it burning up the trees that were standing. There were two kinds of woods fires, and he had seen both kinds. One kind burned on the ground, among the bushes, and set fire to the trees above it. That had been how this fire had started. Then there were fires that got into the tops of trees and lit one treetop from another. Little burning things fell down and set fire to what was on the ground, and this burned after the big fire in the treetops. This was a bad kind of fire; with a strong wind it moved very fast. Nobody could escape by running ahead of it.
“Big Ones’ Friend not say anything,” Big She objected.
“Big Ones’ Friend make think,” Wise One said. “Not think, do wrong thing. Do wrong thing, all make dead.”
Maybe it would be best just to stay here all day and wait for the ground to get cool and the little burning things to go out. He thought that the place where they had camped and where the fire had started was to the east of them, but he wasn’t sure. There was a lake to the south of them, he knew that, but he didn’t know which one. There were too many lakes in this place. And there were too many bloodyhell sunnabish fires all around!
“Nothing to eat, this place,” Carries-Bright-Things complained. “Good-to-eat things all burn.”
As soon as she said that, everybody remembered that they were hungry. They had eaten a goofer, but that had been a long time ago, and they had not been able to finish it.
“We have to find not-burn-yet place, then find good-to-eat things.” The trouble was, he didn’t know where there were any not-burn-yet places, and if they found one maybe the fire would come and then there would be more trouble. He looked up the stream. “I think we go that way. Maybe find not-burn place, maybe find place where fire all dead, ground cool.”
And then they would have to get back to the lakes and find a place to camp and start building a raft. He thought of all the work they had done that they would have to do over, the rope they would have to make, the things to work with, the logs. That was a sick-making thing to think of. And the trouble he and Wise One and Stabber would have with some of the others…
They started up the stream, with the whole country burned black, gray with smoke and ashes on either side, and the black trees standing, still burning. They waded where the water was not too deep. Where it was, they walked on the bank, careful to avoid burning things. The stream bent; now they were going straight west.
Then they heard an aircar sound. They all stopped and listened. Pappy Jack had always told him that if he were lost, he should build a fire and make a big smoke, so that somebody would see. He had to laugh at that. This time he had made a big smoke. Some Big One, even far away, had seen it and come to see what made it. Then he was disappointed. He knew what the sound was. It was not an aircar nearby but a big air-thing, a ship, far off. He knew about them. One came every three days to Wonderful Place, bringing things. It was always fun when a ship came; none of the Fuzzies would stay in school but would all run out to watch.